My expensive Razer Lycosa keyboard has never really worked well for me since I purchased it last year.  It alternates between pretending I am pressing a key and holding it down randomly and sometimes just disabling some of my keys until I unplug it and plug it back in.  This happened to me while in a party while playing Wow, so I thought it was time for a new keyboard.  I wandered down to my local BestBuy to see what they had in stock for gaming keyboards.  Ideally I was looking for a Logitech G110, but they did not have any in stock.  All they had were the expensive G19s and a cheaper Saitek Cyborg v.5 for a lot less money.  I looked at the Saitek and thought to myself that it seemed to have all the features I was looking for, so I snagged it.

The first requirement I have for a keyboard these days is backlit keys.  The Cyborg v.5 has pleasant red backlit keys that show up quite nicely in the dark.  I like these over the blue ones from my Lycosa as they are not as intense in the dark.  The Blue keys from the Lycosa were quite bright and were distracting in a dark room.  The lower intensity red keys on the Cyborg do not have this problem.

The second requirement is a nice response rate and anti-ghosting.  Razer keyboards all seem to have 1000 MHz refresh rate while the Cyborg only has 500 MHz.  This is plenty fine for my level of gaming.  The Cyborg also has anti ASDW ghosting, and since these are the most used keys for me while gaming, this requirement was also met.  The action of the keys is adequate, but not as nice as the Lycosa.

The keyboard can also record 12 macros for those of you who use them.  I personally do not, so this feature does not do much for me.  If anyone has tried them on this keyboard leave us a comment below.

The keyboard lacks a number of high end features that the Lycosa has.  For one, it does not have the USB pass-through to connect other devices to it.  It also lacks the audio pass-through, so you cannot plug your headset into it.  It does not have color controls like the G110 but that is fine if you are ok with just the red.

Overall, this keyboard is a low end gaming keyboard that is better than ye olde random Dell keyboard you may have lying around.  It is not as nice as some of the higher end keyboards, but a lot of the features in those are merely fluff or are geared toward super top end gamers.  For me, this keyboard does everything I need.  The action on the keys themselves could be nicer, but for around $30, it’s a steal, if you can afford a G110 however, snag that.  It’s Geektime gives the Saitek Cyborg v.5 keyboard a 7 on the d10 of gaming peripherals.